Thursday, October 22, 2015

Jonathan McLatchie says that intelligent design is a science

Here's another short podcast on a Christian apologetics show. Jonathan McLatchie is being asked whether intelligent design is a science.

I agree that many ID proponents try to use the science way of knowing to prove that creator gods must have built some complex molecular structures inside modern cells. They try to use evidence and they try to use rational thinking to arrive at logical conclusions. That qualifies as science, in my opinion, even though ID proponents fail to make their case. They don't have the evidence and their logic is faulty. It's science but it's bad science.

Lots of genuine scientists also publish bad science.

I don't agree with much of what Jonathan McLatchie says in this video even though we might arrive at similar conclusions. I don't think he understands why you need to use the broad definition of science in order to make ID legitimate.

Some of what he says misrepresents the activities of most ID proponents who concentrate 99% of their activities on discrediting evolution. Only a tiny percentage of ID proponents try to make the positive case for ID and that tiny effort has been an abject failure.

There's another problem with this video. Some of my friends make the blanket statement that ID is NOT SCIENCE. That is, it lies completely outside any boundary you would draw to encompass all of "science." I don't agree with that view but I also don't think that ID lies completely within the boundary that encompasses the scientific way of knowing. That's because ID is not just an activity directed at finding the truth about the universe, it's also a political and social movement that embraces religious zealots and Young Earth Creationists and others who are very much anti-science.

As long as ID supports outspoken leaders like Denyse O'Leary, Barry Arrington, Phillip Johnson, Casey Luskin, David Klinghoffer, Paul Nelson, John West, William Lane Craig, and others who are not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, then it can't claim to be entirely scientific.1 It's also a movement and that movement is called Intelligent Design Creationism and their ultimate goal is to replace true science with an approach based on the premise that gods exist. It wants faith to be recognized as a valid way of knowing and it wants to destroy materialism and all the "evils" associated with it.

This is why a spokesman for ID appears on a Christian apolgetics podcast even though the Pastor who runs the show is not a scientist and probably doesn't accept scientific results. He knows, just as you and I know, that ID is a front for creationism. It's an attempt to dress up creationism in a lab coat and that's why so many Christian fundamentalists support it even thought they don't give a damn about science.

If McLatchie were being honest, he wouldn't support this attempt to hoodwink Christian apologists into thinking that ID has found scientific proof that gods exist. Unless, of course, Jonathan McLatchie actually believes that's true.

1. Discovery Institute Fellows UPDATE: I did not mean to imply that everyone on the list was a Discovery Institute Fellow. I know full well that Denyse O'Leary and Barry Arrington are not Fellows. I know that the Discovery Institute has low standards but not that low. The link was meant to show that William Lane Craig is a Fellow.

86 comments
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Other motivations, as others said, are not relevant to the investigation merits in its claim to being science.This guy on the vid makes a perfect case ID is testable. In the last seconds.Case closed. ID exists to make a scientific case. YEC also in its criticisms of the opponents. Not assertions as that has a witness/bible.Professor Moran clearly says some iD thinkers do science.

Yet the attack on ID as not science is insulting. They are trying in sincerity and are grown men, well degree-ed, and present thie work to be seen as science.Science deniers about ID must go a long way and not just win credibility by mere statements.The great mass of the public, if listening to ID thinkers, WOULD agree its science investigation.The only thing is to show UEC is as scientific as ID. Thats next. ID folks, including the vid talkers could help better.By the way SCience is just people thinking about things in a methodological way before drawing conclusions.Its only somewhat more careful then walking downstairs in the dark.Its not that much higher in human thought then other things.

"Yet the attack on ID as not science is insulting. They are trying in sincerity..."

That is exactly what they are not doing. There is nothing sincere about the way they are approaching science. Sincerity would necessitate that they address the nature of the designer and the mechanisms that it uses (used).

How is a design inference different from a construction inference? If we find a rock with a sharp edge, if we infer it is a stone tool made by Australopithecus, we do not do so based on its "design", because the same geometric design might or might not look artificial in different contexts. If we conclude that Australopithecus made the tool, we do so based on knowledge of what hominids can and cannot construct, given the materials and abilities available to them.

It's a construction inference, not a design inference. That's how anthropology works. We need to know: what powers and abilities and materials and purposes for construction did hominids have?

By contrast, Dembski said a design inference was when you know that "an intelligence" (= gods or men) made something because it has *a pattern* which, EVEN IF NOTHING IS KNOWN ABOUT ITS ORIGIN, we know cannot be produced by natural processes.

In principle such patterns might exist (poetry?), but there are none found in any living organism, not in the genome of any species.

But anthropology does not do design inferences by this definition, it does construction inferences based on knowledge of what hominids can construct or can't construct from the materials available.

Dembski made an attempt to come up with a method to detect design.It may not be a complete success but I’m not sure it is a complete failure either.At this point ‘design’ is not a scientific subject. So to say something is designed or not is outside of science.‘Specified complexity’ seems like an interesting idea. I don’t know if it can be worked out rigorously enough to make for an objective test.Perhaps we need a ‘unit of design’. I have no idea what that would be.

This reminds me of the "What is art?" problem. Everything is art but people tend to dismiss stuff they don't like as not art...

So in a certain sense (although it's a bit weak) everything is science...

But I still would argue that the ID crowd isn't really engaging in useful science. They have a bias that there is necessarily agency behind evolution or that we're "designed" like a human would design. And endeavouring to claim there is agency behind life (and everything else) is just religion...

This reminds me of the "What is art?" problem. Everything is art but people tend to dismiss stuff they don't like as not art. [snip]But I still would argue that the ID crowd isn't really engaging in useful science.

Steve says "all we have is intelligence,..all we see is intelligence around us....."

IDiot, science needs a negative control. If everything is intelligence, there's no design inference, the question "Is it designed" is always answered "yes." Like a geiger counter that always clicks, or a thermometer that always says "fever".

With no negative control to test against, you have no evidence your design detector is actually working. It isn't, it just says "yes" to everything. Is hydrogen combusting with oxygen to make H2O intelligently designed? Is every H2O molecule intelligently designed? YES, say IDiots.

How have their careers impacted science in a practical and meaningful way??

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that if your career doesn't impact science in a practical and meaningful way then it isn't science?

Doesn't that rule out everyone who promotes intelligent design or do you think there are legitimate ID scientists whose career impacts science in a practical and meaningful way? Which ones are you thinking of?

Now, one can’t have it both ways. One can’t say both that ID is unfalsifiable (or untestable) and that there is evidence against it. Either it is unfalsifiable and floats serenely beyond experimental reproach, or it can be criticized on the basis of our observations and is therefore testable. The fact that critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against ID (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable.

In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum--or any equally complex system--was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.

Behe's fallacy here is that only the replication of a natural process in laboratory conditions counts as evidence agains his claims. Actually, even if it could be done in a lab, I doubt if Intelligent Design would be disproven in the eyes of its proponents. Behe believes in the Designer's discreet interventions every now and then (crucial mutations will not happen by themselves, will they?). So if someone grows a flagellum in vitro, he can always claim that the mutations conferring better mobility were put there by the invisible hand of an intelligence whose name doesn't matter.

I'd say Behe is turning the scientific method on it's head. What he's saying is, I have a great idea, and you have to prove it isn't one. When the normal way in science is:1) I have a great idea2) *I* need to perform experiments to show it really is a great idea.3) Once I publish my data it might be established as a great idea when others try to reproduce my experiments and data and confirm my findings.

And I quote:"You get the most flak when you're over the target" is a pseudo-logical gambit, a favorite of Internet argument used as a substitute for rational rebuttal. Its intention, of course, is to prove that a hopelessly irrational woo proposition must be right because opponents are taking the trouble to criticize it.

Finally, ID proponents will demand a play by play replay of the developement of the flagellum and if one step is missing (why did the lab tech change medium on the cultures 2 minutes later than normal, when did the lab tech go to the toilet ), you can bet there's room to hide a goddidit in there.

Interestingly enough, when asked for a play by play replay of godidit... *ahem* ID, the steve's, el's, joe g's all starting screaming that the beginnings isn't important, they don't have to explain the designer, because that's not relevant to the discussion. Uh huh.It sounds like a court case where the defense has to show a play by play replay of why their client is innocent, and in missing one detail it's "AHAH! You don't know what time your client brushed his teeth, he must be guilty, let's fry him!" when the DA only has to say 'stevedidit'.

So what Ed is really saying is 'trust Larry Moran. he's the authority on evolution. he knows what he is talking about. besides there are mountains and mountains of speculative evidence that the remote possibility of evolution creating something is really there. you just have to link all the 'tantalizing hints".

Strictly speaking, Behe is correct. Such an experiment would falsify his creationist hypothesis. However, his error (or rhetorical trick) is in suggesting that only such an experiment would falsify his beliefs. That he is correct in stating his claims are falsifiable is obviously correct, as attested to by the fact that every single one of them has been falsified:

His claim that the flagellum could not function if even a single component was missing is falsified by the existence of the type III secretory system.

His claim that random mutations cannot lead to beneficial traits is falsified by R. Lenski's long term evolution experiment.

His claim that chloroquine resistance in malaria represents an "edge" to the complexity of biological entities which can be produced by evolution is falsified by the simple fact that the numbers on which he based this calculation were wrong:

And so forth. And when he refuses to acknowledge these falsifications and continues to recite his claims as if they could still be true, that is when he ceases to be a scientist and becomes, instead, a religious apologist.

“A scientific hypothesis should be potentially falsifiable, that is, there should be criteria according to which a hypothesis can be disproved and thus be rejected as false. As to the origin of species, Darwin had asserted that evolution proceeds by “infinitesimally small inherited variations”, “steps not greater than those separating fine varieties” and “insensibly fine steps”, “for natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest and slowest steps”. This is also the credo of most modern evolutionists (neo-Darwinians) and, in principle, even of the proponents of the punctuated equilibrium theory. However, the idea of slow evolution by “infinitesimally small inherited variations” etc. has been falsified by the findings of palaeontology (abrupt appearance of the Baupläne) as well genetics (origin of DNA and complex genetic information). Yet its adherents principally reject any scientific proof against Neo-Darwinism, so that, in fact, their theory has become a non-falsifiable world-view, to which people stick in spite of all contrary evidence. Their main reason: Without Darwinism, philosophic materialism has lost its battle against an intelligent origin of the world.“

His claim that random mutations cannot lead to beneficial traits is falsified by R. Lenski's long term evolution experiment.

E-coli mutation and evolution

http://creationwiki.org/E-coli_mutation_and_evolution

Despite the fascinating insight that the Lenski experiments provide into the adaption of bacteria to their food supply, these experiments have failed to demonstrate the mechanism for evolution. Natural selection is active in nature and mutations explain the adaptation of bacteria to their environment. Bacteria are a different domain of life and they have remarkable capabilities but these mechanisms would largely not apply to higher organisms. Scientists are discovering – an incredible design at the invisible molecular level of life. However, the adaptability of bacteria to starvation does not begin to reveal a mechanism for macroevolution.

You poor delusional idiot. Darwin was imagining the process one way, and obviously, today we don't think that things happened exactly as he proposed. He was working on a hypothesis backed up by a load of data, but further tests about such things as tempo were still necessary.

You poor imbecile, the ones who stay literal about Darwin, and about the storybooks of the Bible, are yourselves. We know today, and people of scientific inclinations knew back then, that the idea of evolution made a lot of sense, and that the mechanism proposed made a lot of sense, but that it lacked enough details to know if the process would be one of "infinitesimally small" steps, or not, if there would be a constant gradual change, or stasis with punctuated bursts of relatively quick change, and whether natural selection alone would explain how evolution happens. To name but a few.

Darwin gave us an initial idea, but Darwin did not know genetics (how could he?). He did not know about molecules or mutations (how could he?), he did not know how much variation could coexist within a single species, and much more. That doesn't mean that evolution is false. It just means that to develop a theory proper we still had a huge road to walk.

Evolution is about our undeniable common ancestry with lots of other life forms. We are trying to understand how that happened and continues to happen. The common ancestry is not going to go away. The mechanisms that explain it are the ones that continue to be discovered, described, evaluated, etc.

Grow up already. Think. We're scientists. We care about how. We don't adhere to a credo. It's just ridiculous that you would think that we take Darwin's book as you take your storybook. I respect Darwin's book, but I know that it's not all literally true. That a lot is but proposals. That many proposals might be very wrong (as some were shown to be). It's not like a fucking Bible is to you. Stop pretending it to be. We don't think the way you do. We evaluate, test, evaluate again, test again, experiment, analyse. We don't just say "Darwin said so, it is so." Remember that the creationist is you!

Once you remember who's the creationist you might embarras yourself a bit less.

Photosynthesis. people like you that resort all the time to name-calling their oponents, are losers . Come up to my level , and we talk. I won't come down to yours, as i don't like to lose time with fools.

Sorry, but to come down to your level would mean to renounce the use of my brain. I won't do that. If you cannot read past the well-deserved insults, then you are not mentally equipped to defend your "faith" (which is kind of obvious anyway). It's ironic that you would call me a fool, when it's you who refuses to use your brain.

How did you win those insults you ask? By being such a brainless copy/paste troll. That's how.

Photosynthesis. people like you that resort all the time to name-calling their oponents, are losers . Come up to my level , and we talk. I won't come down to yours, as i don't like to lose time with fools.

Then he says,

Laurence, if you want to entertain a kindergarden here, feel free to do so. Its your blog.....

If I may presume to answer for Larry: If we could think of a way to test the possibility that God is holding the galaxies together w/ his giant hands, shouldn't we? And, if we did, wouldn't that be science?

Further: Is there any reason, in principle, that that claim could not be tested?

I don't think ID is science because it necessarily postulates miracles. // many misconceptions and ignorance about the design inference here.

http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_idtheoryoverview.htm‘intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory making, has more explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes irreducible complexity of some physical systems, including biological entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind forces of. . . matter.’

I think you need to copy-paste and link more stuff you believe uncritically, it doesn't seem to be working yet. Maybe if you just can copy-paste a few more pages and link a few more websites, maaaaybe the darwinlutionists will finally crack. Right?

ID does NOT posit miracles. What a ignorant thing to say !!! On the other, positing that the universe made itself from nothing and by nothing (Lawrence Krauss) seems, well, like a miracle if ever I heard one.

Ignorant thing to say? Hum, then why don't they start by trying to figure out if there was a plausible designer around the times when this designer is supposed to have done something, and the tools this designer might have used? Why don't they look for evidence of a laboratory, or something like that? Why do they kind of conveniently forget to look for plausible designers and concentrate instead on trying to show how "implausible" evolution is, and how everything in nature looks as of done by some superhuman who works in ways that leave no trace of tools and methods for design?

I would suspect that it's hypocritical to say that ID does not posit miracles.

Attacking Kraus out of your own ignorance is beyond ironic after you say that others here are ignorant of ID.

I also take your attack on Kraus to mean that you think that the whole thing is designed. If so, do you really not see the stupidity of pretending to be able to detect design when your claim is that the whole thing is designed? If the whole thing is designed, then what can you possibly use as a null model? Nothing. Everything being designed and everything being natural would look exactly the same, since there's nothing to contrast against. If there's nothing to contrast again, might as well go with the evidence that your fantasies about gods are but that, fantasies, and leave it there.

No, it does not postulate miracles, Motörheadsong. ID is a conclusion.

Most people don't understand, or do not want to grasp, that ID is not a method, or a starting point............ID is a CONCLUSION....based upon exclusion principles and followoing the scientific methodology.

Bullshit. ID requires supernatural violations of natural law (miracles) both when God creates life and when humans create "specified complexity."

IDiots claim that no operation of natural laws, alone or in combination, can create "specified complexity" or "irreducible complexity." So how, then, can a human brain, made of chemicals interacting according to natural laws, create "specified complexity"? Because IDers postulate that the chemicals in the human brain can **violate natural laws** and must do so, to believe in "free will" and that humans create "specified complexity" which no combination of chemical interactions can ever produce. So "free will" and the creation of "specified complexity" by humans are de facto supernatural processes.

If you don't believe that, IDiots say, then you deny "free will", and you reduce man to mere accidents of chemicals, which means you make man into a machine, which means you lower man to an animal, which means you elevate man to the level of a god, which means you debase man into a slave, which leads to Hitler and the Holocaust!!!! Insert photoshopped image of Darwin's face morphing into Hitler's face here.

Yet positing the supernatural for how life originated is logically consistent with the scientific evidence. The law of biogenesis shows that life could not have arisen naturally, To say that life arose from non life naturally is to contradict the law of biogenesis.

You would be rejecting how nature operates by putting your faith in life originating naturally.

The person that posits a supernatural cause for a first organism originating is accepting that you have to go beyond nature for how life originated because to claim life arose naturally is not consistent with the law of biogenesis.

You are rejecting what is known about how nature operates with your faith in life originating naturally.

Why do you hold to your faith of life originating naturally when it is not consistent with how nature is known to operate?

I know Larry doesn't like to ban people, but everything people like Peer, Steve, Jack Jones, etc. say reveals their profound ignorance of science, their intellectual dishonesty, and their unwillingness to correct either one. They add nothing to the conversation.

My gosh, Diogenes wants to pontificate about what ID proponents believe, while getting it totally wrong. It would appear that he has read NOTHING about ID. Not even the very basics that would take all of a few minutes. #DiedFromAstonishment

Please suggest a mechanism for how a designer manipulates genomes without resorting to miracles.

ID is a hypothesis for how certain features in genomes came to be as we find them. Without a mechanism for how a designer might tinker with genomes, your hypothesis is completely implausible. It turns ID into a joke.

I'm not saying all design hypotheses are wrong. Clearly there are design hypotheses that have plausible mechanisms and these are clearly science. For example:

If SETI were to detect encoded language from a distant solar system, they would make a design hypothesis and this would be good science because the MECHANISM is PLAUSIBLE. The plausible mechanism would that there could be another species just like us encoding messages in radio waves (just like we do).

If an archaeologist were to discover what appeared to be a flint axe sandwiched between layers allowing him to date it to 40,000 years and he made a design hypothesis then that would be science because the MECHANISM for how it came to be there is PLAUSIBLE. It's plausible that there could have been humans in that area at the time and it is completely plausible that they could make flint axe heads.

Now lets compare these two examples to yours. The only possible mechanism you can suggest for how genomes might have been tinkered with is *magic*. This is not science - it is ignorance parading as science.

Example...let's study the regulation of gene expression of ...say the CEBPA gene in proliferation of ASM Cells...

Can we start with ID? As a method? Of course not. Nobody within the ID community would argue like that.

After studying 2 decades using the scientifc methods, involving hundreds of scientists, and after 2000 publication...it is apparent that teh CEBPA gene operates as part of an irreducible network of genetic and protein interactions, where the beginning and end cannot be defined.

That such a system is the results of a blind process is a conclusion (a very poor one, though).

That such system might be the result of intelligent design is a conclusion, too (the better one in my opinion)

No, Peer, ID is an Appeal to Ignorance. It claims that since science has not (to the satisfaction of cdesign proponentsists) explained X through natural processes, that supernatural processes are involved. But does anyone really believe that the ID people haven't already decided that a Designer exists?

The claim of design is based on what we do know, Not what we do not know. Your chance faith is viewed skeptically based on what is known.

See? you're full of shit. I will explain, and we will all see you "missing" (rather avoiding) the points. here it goes.

No you hypocritical imbecile. We don't have "faith" in "chance." The false dichotomy between either gods or "chance" is mere creationist rhetorical bullshit. We think of natural phenomena. Natural phenomena are not "chance." Gravitation, clearly, is not "chance." "Chance" can be a component of a complex phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that the other components is gods. Why do you buy into that bullshit of a dichotomy? Because apologists say so, that's why. because you don't have your own brain to think, and because when we explain you don't listen. You're an idiot.

The "claim for design" is not based on what we know. It's based on ignorance. If it was based on knowledge, there would be no such claim. Where's the designer? Where are this designer's tools? Where's the evidence that designers were around when life originated? How could life originate via designers? Were the designers dead? Now who's a walking contradiction (and a hypocrite)? (You of course!)

"Based on what we know." Sure you idiot.

You put your faith in a living organism originating naturally from non life in spite of the evidence and not because of it.

What faith you hypocrite? Where's is the evidence that life could not possibly originate naturally? Are you telling me that every time an organism reproduces gods or "designers" are doing everything? That reproduction is a myth? It's all magic and there's proof that it's all magic? If not, then why should we expect magic involved elsewhere you idiot?

But your faith in life originating from non living matter on its own is.

I have no such faith. Faith belongs to your camp of superstitious idiots. Life could not have originated on its own you nonsensical idiot. For life to originate "on its own" would mean life originating out of itself, which is like saying that English originated from English. You moron. Life originated from natural phenomena. How's that "chance" you brainless piece of shit?

Life is not neccesary, it is contingent, that leaves only chance or design.

No idiot, that leaves natural phenomena other than life. "Design" would mean something already alive, and you're saying that life is not necessary but contingent. "Design" is out of the question from your own premise you imbecile.

You reject design therefore you are left with chance. A true dichotomy.

A false dichotomy as you were happy to demonstrate on your own and out of your own stupidity. Look at the mirror before continuing ridiculing yourself.

The law of biogenesis shows that life could not have originated in nature by chance,

Yet another false dichotomy. The "law" of biogenesis is not about contrasting life against chance at all. But I'm not about to help you out on this one (having you ridiculing yourself by constantly repeating this very same crap about the law of biogenesis is too much fun). Please explain to us how that "law" was proposed, and what it actually demonstrated. Make sure you can demonstrate that the comparison was "chance" with something else.

I know you would like us to believe as you were told by creationist propagandists, but we don't. We won't buy into your false dichotomies, and we won't buy into whatever you think that the origin of life is supposed to be from a scientific point of view. To learn about the origin of life from a scientific point of view we go and talk to scientists versed in the matter, not to religious nutjobs like yourself.

> The designer does not have to...one single creation event was sufficient. Frontloading theory, mister AoS. Inform yourself.

And now we see that your ID is actually creationism. Smart move. You've just admitted it.

But even in spite of your blunder, your hypothesis still fails. What you've given here is basically Behes argument:

> Fine-tuning doesn't require a constant stream of miraculous intervention because all of the fine-tuning might have been done right at the beginning of time before the universe was kicked into gear.

Behe might be a half decent geneticist, but he's not a physicist.

Go and read a quantum mechanics text book and you will find that planning the future in intricate detail through attempted front loading is impossible.

Quantum mechanics shows us that the future is unknowable and indeterminable. You can't pick a bunch of parameters and have the future turn out the same way every time. The picking of quantum states is inherently stochastic and a small event like a virtual particle popping into existence or an atom that decayed a fraction of a second later could cascade into enormous effects further down the line making the future inherently indeterminable.

That men cannot determine momentum and position information of partcile does not imply such cannot be done in general. It only says men cannot. For external observers independent of the laws of this universe there will surely be absolute determinacy.

That men cannot determine momentum and position information of partcile does not imply such cannot be done in general. It only says men cannot. For external observers independent of the laws of this universe there will surely be absolute determinacy.

Your ignorance again betrays you. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is not a statement regarding the practical limits of our ability to measure. It is a statement regarding the nature of physical reality itself. That is to say, it does not mean that a particle whose momentum we have measured also has a precise position, but we are just not able to measure it. The position is actually indeterminate in inverse proportion to the accuracy with which the momentum has been measured. (That's my layman's understanding, anyway. Aceofspades will correct me if I am wrong, I'm sure.)

So saying that God would be able to determine both momentum and position with absolute certainty is the same as saying that, to God, the earth is actually flat. Which, perhaps, is possibly true according the some views of the universe. But in such views discussion of science would be pointless.

I welcome everyone to Sandwalk no matter what their views. The only thing I ask is that you post intelligent and informative comments that contribute to the ongoing discussion.

I'm pretty flexible about what I mean by "contribute." There are no hard-and-fast rules that distinguish kooks from people with valid, but unusual, opinions. Nevertheless, it's my blog and and at some point I'm going to make a decision about certain people.

This is to let you know that your recent comments are not falling within the range of opinions that I think are valid contributions. If you don't make a more serious attempt to say something intelligent then I will delete your comments.

"The designer does not have to...one single creation event was sufficient."

How? I want to know how! How does the designer know what it does? How does it know that the organism it creates will work? How does it create it? What material does it use? How does it make it all stick together without falling apart when all the parts are not yet there and so on?

Oh wait.. you mean magic. *POOF* and there it is, fully formed. No assembly, no planning, no conversion of raw materials. There is no purification of compounds, no temperature adjustments, no period allowed to let something harden or solidify, no surface to be polished or painted. None of the things one would normally associate with design and manufacture. You know, what everybody actually thinks of when we use the word design: Someone actually doing work, collected the necessary parts and preparing them, to work on an entity. Getting an idea and then building it, testing it, re-building it on previous experiences and so on. But there's none of it in this "design" you speak of. It's pure freaking magic. Make-believe. An empty place-holder word.

And you call this "design". That's not design, it's magic. It has ZERO explanatory power. It invites nothing but ignorance and scientific defeatism.

"As if the black pixels on this screen explains the information in this communication...."

No, of course not. It's magic. The pixels are magically arranged. There's no physics behind them. The fingers that typed this did so supernaturally, and it's only through magic that the patterns form. The pixels organization is magical, not physical, the way we receive them into our eyes is also magical and supernatural, not physical. That we can measure information is a myth. How could we, since information is magical and supernatural? No way. Therefore information could not arise naturally! Natural phenomena organizing stuff into patterns? Of course not. No, no, no, don't tell me about snow flakes, or about solar systems, or about spiral galaxies, or about DNA. Those might look like physical/chemical stuff. But no, they are information, and we all know that information is supernatural and supernatural only!!!

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.Five Year Goals

To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.Twenty Year Goals

To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

Or in other words the goal has been a scientific theory that makes the above possible. For example:

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, whereby the behavior of matter powers a coexisting trinity of systematically self-similar (in each other's image, likeness) intelligent systems at the molecular, cellular and multicellular level as follows:

[1] Molecular Level Intelligence: Behavior of matter causes self-assembly of molecular systems that in time become molecular level intelligence, where biological RNA and DNA memory systems learn over time by replication of their accumulated genetic knowledge through a lineage of successive offspring. This intelligence level controls basic growth and division of our cells, is a primary source of our instinctual behaviors, and causes molecular level social differentiation (i.e. speciation).

[2] Cellular Level Intelligence: Molecular level intelligence is the intelligent cause of cellular level intelligence. This intelligence level controls moment to moment cellular responses such as locomotion/migration and cellular level social differentiation (i.e. neural plasticity). At our conception we were only at the cellular intelligence level. Two molecular intelligence systems (egg and sperm) which are on their own unable to self-replicate combined into a single self-replicating cell, a zygote. The zygote then divided to become a colony of cells, an embryo. Later during fetal development we made it to the multicellular intelligence level which requires a self-learning neural brain to control motor muscle movements1 (also sweat gland motor muscles).

[3] Multicellular Level Intelligence: Cellular level intelligence is the intelligent cause of multicellular level intelligence. In this case a multicellular body is controlled by an intelligent neural brain expressing all three intelligence levels at once, resulting in our complex and powerful paternal (fatherly), maternal (motherly) and other behaviors. This intelligence level controls our moment to moment multicellular responses, locomotion/migration and multicellular level social differentiation (i.e. occupation). Successful designs remain in the biosphere’s interconnected collective (RNA/DNA) memory to help keep going the billions year old cycle of life, where in our case not all individuals must reproduce for the human lineage to benefit from all in society.

Reciprocal cause/causation between levels goes in both the forward and reverse direction. These communicative behavioral pathways cause all of our complex intelligence related behaviors to connect back to the behavior of matter, which does not necessarily need to be intelligent to be the fundamental source of consciousness. Multicellular and cellular level individuals are born then die while the genetic molecular level lives on, by this self-replication of itself.

And you seemed to have missed what Salvador wrote that at this point in time makes him the expert in regards to where ID is going for science. But I can understand your need for dwelling on those who are not, as was reprted by news at UD in response to this, Larry's article. Without your rehashed strawman arguments it becomes too obvious that you already lost the ID debate in regards to whether the "theory of intelligent design" is science or not.

You might also be interested in following links to what else at least some of us are reading, from the NCSE and beyond:

Science itself has left you behind. How humanity will in the future understand the origin of even our our brain is now being most changed by things like what is going on in a biofilm "superorganism" that lives among us today, not from yammering on even more times about "natural selection".

gary, please provide links to statements by the discooters and other IDCs that directly refer to your version of so-called 'ID theory' and are supportive of it.

After calling "Salvador" "the expert in regards to where ID is going for science", you said:

"But I can understand your need for dwelling on those who are not, as was reprted by news at UD in response to this, Larry's article."

What do you mean by that? Are you saying that the discotooters and all(?) other IDiot-creationists are not "expert in regards to where ID is going for science", therefor their lack of support for your version doesn't matter? How about "news" (o'leary)? Is she "expert in regards to where ID is going for science"? Does she support your version of ID? Can you provide statements by "Salvador" (YEC Sal Cordova) that directly support your version?

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

Sandwalk

The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.